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Battle of Rosillo

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/RR/qfr2.html

ROSILLO, BATTLE OF. The battle of Rosillo, known also as the battle of
Salado and as the battle of Rosalis, was fought on March 29, 1813, on a
prairie near the confluence of Rosillo and Salado creeks, nine miles
southeast of San Antonio in southern Bexar County. The engagement was
between the Republican Army of the North led by José Bernardo
Gutiérrez de Lara and Samuel Kemperqv and a Spanish royalist force
under Texas governor Manuel María de Salcedo and Nuevo León governor
Simón de Herrera.qv The battle was called the battle of Salado in
contemporary accounts but is generally known today as the battle of
Rosillo to distinguish it from the battle of Salado Creek,qv sometimes
called the battle of the Salado, in 1842. The battle of Rosillo
resulted in the capture of San Antonio and the establishment of a first
"republic of Texas."

After lifting a siege lasting from November 7, 1812, to February 19,
1813, against the republican forces of the Gutiérrez-Magee
expeditionqv at Presidio La Bahía, Spanish royalist forces under
Salcedo and Herrera retreated to San Antonio. In mid-March the
republican army, variously estimated at 600 to 900 men, set out along
the road from La Bahía to San Antonio. A Spanish royalist force
variously reported to be 950 to 1,500 men prepared an ambuscade along a
ridge that borders the creeks. About eleven o'clock on the morning of
March 29, the republicans were marching on the lower or mission road,
expecting to find food and take up quarters for the night at San
Francisco de la Espada Mission, when their flankers discovered the
enemy on the upper road. The ensuing battle was bloody and brief,
lasting no more than an hour but resulting in the complete rout of the
royalists and the capture of most of their arms and ammunition, six
cannons, and 1,500 horses and mules. Royalist losses were heavy,
estimated to be 100 to 330 men, while the republicans lost only six
men. The defeated royalists retreated to San Antonio, and the
victorious republicans spent the night at Mission Espada. The next day
they took up quarters at Nuestra Señora de la Purísma Concepción
Mission. On April 1 Kemper marched his troops in battle formation to
the gates of the city, where they were met by three envoys carrying a
flag of truce. Governors Salcedo and Herrera surrendered
unconditionally, and the Republican Army of the North took over the
city.

An aftermath of the battle occurred on April 3, when Salcedo, Herrera,
and twelve other prisoners were escorted late that evening out of Bexar
under the guard of sixty men and were brutally executed near the site
of the battle of Rosillo. A declaration of independence was adopted on
April 6, 1813, establishing a republic of Texas with Gutiérrez as
president, a Junta de Gobierno, and a constitution. All came to an end
after the disastrous battle of Medinaqv on August 18, 1813. In 1992
neither the site of the battle of Rosillo nor the site of the
executions of governors Salcedo and Herrera had been archeologically
confirmed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Félix D. Almaráz, Tragic Cavalier: Gov. Manuel Salcedo
of Texas, 1808-1813 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971). Julia
Kathryn Garrett, Green Flag Over Texas: A Story of the Last Years of
Spain in Texas (Austin: Pemberton Press, 1939). Ted Schwarz and Robert
H. Thonhoff, Forgotten Battlefield of the First Texas Revolution: The
Battle of Medina (Austin: Eakin Press, 1985). Henry P. Walker, ed.,
"William McLane's Narrative of the Magee-Gutiérrez Expedition,
1812-1813," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 66 (January 1963).

Robert H. Thonhoff